


A Sense of Identity

by aaliona



Series: Yukonic [1]
Category: Deadpool (Movieverse), Deadpool - All Media Types, Marvel, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, First Meeting, If no one else will write this ship by god I'll write it myself, Nonbinary Character, Teenagers, The gender is not made explicit here but is vaguely referenced, Yukonic - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 02:35:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14728343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aaliona/pseuds/aaliona
Summary: Negasonic reflects on her own name as she deals with the gay panic of a teenager lesbian facing her first major crush.Or the first time Negasonic and Yukio meet.





	A Sense of Identity

**Author's Note:**

> None of this fanfic seems to exist yet, which is an absolute crime. I'm not writing as much these days, but such a cute couple deserves some written rep.

She had never liked her name. 

Ellie was so plain, so simple. It was a common name that had never really fit her. Now if her parents had been forward-thinking enough to name her Elliot, she may have felt differently. But Eleanor had never suited her, and Ellie barely worked. But it was the only name she had.

The first time she accidentally exploded into a ball of fire had been terrifying for everyone around her. For Ellie, it was a relief.

She loved her parents, but they’d never really understood what made her tick as a regular human. As a mutant? They were happy to send her off to a fancy school where she could harness her powers and maybe learn some manners.

She hadn’t exactly gained the manners, but Negasonic Teenage Warhead was a miracle of a name. When she was struggling to come up with something that felt like enough, one of the older kids had suggested listening to old songs. Some of the coolest names came from the lyrics. Taking their word for it, Ellie had flipped through old records, pausing when she saw a song title she liked. Negasonic Teenage Warhead had frozen her, an exciting sense of cold running down her center to cut the heat she always knew was there. It was over the top, strong, and just anarchistic enough to feel like an identifier. Once she listened to the record, she decided the song itself was fine. But the name couldn’t be beat.

Most of the other kids found her name to be too much of a mouthful, and she became Negasonic to most of them. Occasionally someone dug up the name Ellie Phimister. It wasn’t exactly a secret, but Negasonic did everything in her power not to answer to it and to get people to stop using it.

Most of the time it worked. Even when she wasn’t actively using her powers for anything, just channeling them was enough to intimidate most people. She infrequently got asked what she would do about her name once she wasn’t a teenager anymore. 

She would shoot whoever asked a scorching look complete with one raised eyebrow and say, “The name is more than just Teenage. I think I’ve got other parts to keep.”

Secretly she liked the ring of Negasonic Warhead. It sounded even more badass in her mind than the full moniker, but twelve-year-old Ellie had been too excited by the idea of literally identifying as a teen. Until she turned nineteen, though, she could handle the middle, especially since no one ever used the full name anyway.

Except occasionally Wade, but he alternated that with so many insults and (often outdated) pop culture references that she didn’t really care.

“Negasonic,” Colossus called up the stairs. As usual, his voice carried without him actually raising his voice above typical speaking level. “Come down here. There is friend I want you to meet.”

Friend was not a typical word thrown her way. Negasonic knew Colossus had been trying to find her a nice friend ever since she’d buzzed her hair. It had been the same chin-length bob since before discovering her powers, and Negasonic had needed a change when she hit fifteen. She thought it made her look edgy. One of the more obnoxious preteens had said it made her look ready to beat someone up. She’d only somewhat threatened to beat him up for it.

Even now that she was letting it grow, Negasonic was more than happy to lean into that reputation whenever possible. She imagined this supposed friend would be easily intimidated with a scowl or two and that Negasonic could escape after a quick tour and a little awkward small talk.

She wasn’t expecting a perky pink-haired girl with gorgeous eyes to be waiting at Colossus’s side.

“Negasonic!” Colossus said enthusiastically, clamping a hand on her shoulder that was obviously oblivious to her gay panic. “This is Yukio. She will be joining X-Men.”

“Hello,” said the girl. She bounced forward--literally bounced--and stuck out her hand for Negasonic to shake. “It’s nice to meet you.”

She reacted on autopilot and shook the girl’s hand, trying not to focus on its soft warmth. “You too,” Negasonic said. Was her voice faint? Damn it! She’d gone through all this work to build a reputation, and it was all about to be undone by a single pretty girl.

“Colossus said we might have a lot in common.” Yukio’s eyes actually sparkled as she looked up at the metal man.

Negasonic looked up too, mostly to determine if he was having heat stroke from baking in his metal body all day. Aside from an affinity for nontraditional aesthetics, Negasonic couldn’t imagine what she and Princess Bubblegum had in common.

God, she needed to spend less time around Wade.

“Indeed,” Colossus said, giving Negasonic a firm thump on the back that almost sent her flying. “You two are same age, both sassy, both independent. I expect the two of you to be fast friends.”

As two pairs of eyes looked at her expectantly, Negasonic felt a bit of sweat building at the back of her neck. But gay panic or no, she couldn’t afford to be weird. If she screwed up this girl’s first day, Colossus might not forgive her. Plus, bangs that perfect and that pink couldn’t belong to a straight girl, right?

“We’ll see,” she said, trying to remain neutral outwardly. “Would you like a tour, Yukio?”

As Yukio beamed at her, Colossus gave Negasonic another affirming pat on the back. This one did force her to stumble a bit because she’d been so focused on not letting herself be blinded by the literal sunshine on Yukio’s face. 

“Wonderful!” Colossus moved a couple steps down the hall. “I have paperwork to do—finalizing Yukio’s transfer to the team and figuring out her class schedule. I think she would like some of the same classes as you, Negasonic. You two have fun!”

Negasonic watched him gently thunder down the hall, her panic slowly rising toward the surface as she was left alone with the most beautiful girl she’d ever seen.

There was a twinkle in Yukio’s eye that made Negasonic wonder if the girl was onto her. Before she could process that idea, Yukio took a few bouncing steps up the stairs.

“So where do we start?” she asked, offering Negasonic a knee-weakening grin.

Negasonic swallowed hard. Time to hit the reset on her feelings because she’d never be able to function if this kept up. Pretending to become her usual moody self, Negasonic jerked her head in the direction of the grounds.

“It might rain. We would probably check out the training areas first.”

The smile Yukio sent back at her was more reserved than the ones from earlier, and Negasonic tried to pretend the smaller smile gave her a smaller reaction. Being a girl had its advantages for hiding such things. 

…

As Negasonic thought back on the last hour, she wasn’t quite sure how Yukio had ended up on her bed. 

They’d barely made it inside as the rain started up outside. Yukio had scrambled back toward the door with such zeal that Negasonic hadn’t been able to help running alongside her. They’d stumbled back inside laughing loud enough to prompt Colossus to stick his head out of his office. When he’d seen who it was, he simply smiled and let them be.

The downstairs hadn’t taken very long since many of the spaces were ones that they weren’t supposed to go in or had classes in progress. Negasonic was technically missing Latin, but she both hated it and was pretty sure Colossus would vouch for her. He seemed to be in that kind of mood today.

Upstairs was mostly dorms, and when Negasonic had pointed out her own bed, Yukio had collapsed onto it dramatically.

“I hope we’re roommates,” she said with a kind of dreamy earnestness that smacked Negasonic on her ass.

She sat down at the end of her bed, trying not to think about the fact that she’d never had another girl on it before. She didn’t have any female friends who did things like sit on each other’s beds to gossip. The closest she’d come was an offer to visit someone else’s bed when she’d snuck out to a local gay bar. She suspect the other woman had also lied her way in with a fake ID, but even with that suspicion, Negasonic hadn’t been able to justify to herself sleeping with someone she didn’t know, especially if that person thought she was over eighteen and named Alex instead of Ellie.

“We probably will be.” Negasonic shrugged and tried to look like she didn’t care one way or another. “They try to room people age alike. Since most of the other girls are under fourteen or at least eighteen, we’re pretty secluded. There were two other girls in the middle bracket. Both roomed with her, but neither of them talked to her much.

“Lots of guys though,” she added as an afterthought. Without meaning to, Negasonic watched for Yukio’s reaction.

There wasn’t one. Instead she leaned forward and looked expectantly back at Negasonic. “You have a really cool name.”

She didn’t know how to handle that. “Um, that’s the idea,” she said, annoyed by how easy she had been to fluster. “What about you? Is Yukio based on something?” Negasonic didn’t really know anything about Japanese culture, so she hoped it wasn’t something obvious.

“No,” the pink-haired girl replied. “It’s actually my real name.”

Negasonic furrowed her brows together. “Do you not have a name yet?”

She hadn’t when she’d first arrived, but Negasonic had still been relatively young. And Ellie had shed her name as quickly as she could.

Yukio shook her head, ponytail whipping around her face as she did so. “No, and I don’t want one.”

“But you have to have one.”

Yukio smiled, like she knew something Negasonic didn’t. “Actually I don’t. We have them for safety, but it’s not like any of us do anything to protect our identities.”

That was true. Some superheroes were ridiculous about keeping their identities secret, and while Negasonic could understand that perspective, it wasn’t true for a lot of mutants. Often their powers outed them, like hers had. Regardless the big players had their strong we shouldn’t have to hide agenda that they frequently pushed. Many mutants who could have otherwise kept their powers a secret, as she could now that she had much better control of them, readily revealed their identities. Masks weren’t exactly big around here.

It was easy for her, though. She didn’t have a secret identity because Negasonic felt much more like a name than Ellie ever had.

“Still,” Negasonic said. She didn’t know what she was trying to argue, but an argument felt like it needed to be made.

“I’m okay only have one identity,” she insisted. “Besides, my family call me Yuki anyway. Yukio is starting over in a way.”

“A new identity isn’t the same as starting over.”

Yukio simply looked at her, the playful indulgence easy to read. “No? Then why did Colossus call you Negasonic? Why do we all call him Colossus? There may be mutants who go by both readily, but for most of us, the new one is the only thing that matters.”

Maybe that’s why she’d always called Deadpool Wade. As near as she could tell, his alias was purely for professional purposes and because he thought it sounded cool. But to everyone who actually knew him, he was Wade. But despite basically dying multiple times without actually dying, Wade wasn’t a Before and After. It was weird because he literally looked nothing like he had before. (She’d seen the pictures. He was tolerable if you were into clean cut white men, which Negasonic wasn’t.) His personality hadn’t shifted at all, and he’d really just used his After as an extension of the same kind of personality and shit he’d done before. He was just more deadly because he couldn’t die.

Yukio angled her head as she studied Negasonic. In turn, Negasonic wanted to crawl under the bed. 

“What’s your birth name?”

Negasonic bit her lip. That was the million dollar question, wasn’t it? “I don’t actually like it,” she admitted, hoping that would be enough.

That unfortunately didn’t seem to satisfy Yukio’s curiosity. “What not?”

Shrugging in an I-don’t-care way, Negasonic stared down at her bedspread. “I guess it never really fit.”

Yukio didn’t respond. The silence filled the space between them before expanding into the room as a whole. It left Negasonic ready to suffocate, and she couldn’t stop herself from willingly sharing her name for the first since taking on her superhero identity.

“I’m Ellie.”

“That’s a nice name,” Yukio said, “but you’re right. It doesn’t really fit you.”

Negasonic swallowed, glancing back up at Yukio. The seriousness she found on the other girl’s face transfixed her. They stared not uncomfortably at each other for longer than Negasonic cared to admit.

“What about El?” Yukio asked suddenly.

“It’s a nice letter,” Negasonic responded, not understanding where she was going with this.

As Yukio shook her head again, Negasonic let her eyes track the pink swinging hair again.

“Not the letter L. El as a shorthand for your name. It suits you.”

Negasonic paused as she thought about it. It felt less childish than Ellie and less girly too. “I like it,” she said. Without meaning to, she added, “I like you.”

Instantly Negasonic froze, ready to bolt form her own room of embarrassment. Yukio, to her credit, just grinned with all that sunshine Negasonic had noticed earlier.

“I like you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought!


End file.
